[OldMan&TheWeed]

The brownie just kicked in, and this just came to me:

There are two extremes to the views on our energy and food situation. The cornucopians, say not to worry - technology will come to the rescue, energy alternatives will take over as soon as the price is right.

Meanwhile, the Prophets of Doom, predict the collapse of industrial civilization and human population via environmental degradation, warfare, disease, and famine. Or at best they predict a return to a primitive 19th century style of existence with far fewer people on the planet. I predict tough going, but there are also ways for us to scrape through a few more decades until more sustainable technology can be developed and scaled up. The kind of civilization that can be sustained over the long haul is still an open question.

Short term fixes include high mileage small cars that get 90 miles per gallon, coal fired electrical power plants, wind turbines, and nuclear power plants. Also coal gasification could be revived to produce aviation and diesel fuel.

On the one hand environmentalists alarmed by global warming can hardly wait for high oil prices in order to cut back on green house gases. On the other hand, the use coal, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, is even more alarming. We could pump the carbon dioxide waste underground, but as for now it mostly goes into the atmosphere.

However unpalatable some of these fixes may seem to some of us, I believe this is where our future will likely lie, based on current politics and economics.